Lack of medication adherence and compliance by patients is a significant and costly problem. Medication adherence (i.e., taking the right medicine in the right doses and on the right schedule) averages only approximately 50% among patients with chronic conditions in developed countries, including the United States. Patients not taking medications as prescribed puts them at risk for serious adverse health conditions, including death. The leading cause of non-compliance is behavioral; that is, the patient is forgetful or procrastinates, thus missing a dose or being late in obtaining a renewal or refill of a prescription.
Further, non-compliance accounts for approximately 12% of total health care expenditures in the United States. Non-adherence results in frequent re-admissions and additional hospitalizations, emergency department visits, diagnostic tests, physician office visits, and surgeries and other procedures. It is estimated that medication non-adherence results is an annualized cost of from $290 billion to $319 billion to the U.S. healthcare system.
A variety of ways to encourage compliance are known in the prior art, but with limited success. Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method that addresses the root causes of non-compliance, and encourages medication adherence, reconciliation, and synchronization by both patients and trained health care professionals.